I did get a chance to watch a couple of movies this weekend that were both entertaining and thought provoking at the same time, although not directly in the way they were meaning to be.   The first was I love you beth cooper……ya know your basic geek goes after girl type……while it wasn’t that entertaining in the wow I have to go out and buy that right now way, it was interesting in the way that I personally related to it.   In middle school and high school for the most part I was that guy in the movie, the geek who couldn’t even get the girl he was infatuated with to even remember his name let alone talk to him.   While its hard to believe I was ever as bad as him, as most movie geeks are over exaggerated  enough as it is, I felt for the guy.

The second was a movie called away we go.   Its a movie about an unmarried couple who end up getting pregnant, and then travel across the country in looking for the right place to live and raise their daughter.   The cast of the movie was your basic mid level tv actors but what was really good about it was the story’s that their friends and family had along the way.   They were at times funny and at others they were heart wrenching, but they were always just as equally interesting.   I think the most relevant point in the film was when the lead female role turns to her male counterpart and asks him a question in these words, “are we fuck up’s?”.

It wasn’t the question that got me, it was the feelings and general doubt that resonated from her voice as she said it.   They were 34, and she talked about how all of there friends were married with nice houses and beautiful kids already and they didn’t have any of that yet, as if they got left behind when everyone else decided to move on with there lives.   I can relate to the sentiment of feeling abandoned when you watch all of your friends leave on their own journey’s on different paths than your own, watching them get married and start families when you haven’t done anything like that yet.   So in that respect the movie very much hit home.

In another way it made me think about the direction that many of the movies I find myself drawn too anymore are heading too.   There’s no doubt that screenplays are being written by younger crowds now and I can’t help but think that it shows just how disenfranchised my generation is that there’s no longer the classic love story, or the classic super hero story……only shades of gray.   Watchmen for all intensive purposes was a super hero movie……but it was nothing like the classic good vs evil story’s from growing up.   You never see the good guy get the girl he’s always wanted anymore, he almost always realizes what he’s always had in his best friend.   And you see movies like away we go……or Elizabethtown  that tell a story, but in the same respect get you to look at your own life and examine it over and over to see if you can relate to the characters on the screen.   Does this mean that were trying to live through our favorite characters?    I think not, more so that its just my generation of film makers coming into there own.

Don’t get me wrong, just because the guy doesn’t get the girl in the most overly written love story doesn’t mean they aren’t showing the romance in our modern day.   Were a much more emotional and free spirited population now, much more than I would say we ever were.   Its okay to question things now, to wonder if the family with the white picket fence is really whats best for you in the end.   Its okay to question your decisions in your life, and the films today are the epitome of that movement.   The film makers are simply going through the same thing, writing it down similar to what I’m doing right now, and putting it to a much more emotional and thought provoking visual.   One thats not so direct to say “Hey, Look at Me! I’m Trying TO make you reconsider Your Life!”, but leave the option open if your own psyche allows your mind to wander that way.

Warhol once made a movie in the same arena.   He kept a single camera on a building for 18 straight hours, nothing happened in the entire film until the last 10 minutes when the sun had finely set and all of a sudden all the lights in this tall giant building came on.   Reviews of the movie ranged from pointless, to poetic, to genius….all different paths based on our own psyche……….are all of our movies made by Warhol these days?…..one can only wish.

I met a girl on match last week that I get along with fairly well.   She’s very much her own person but very much dedicated to her son.   And before anyone starts giving me crap, I know that I said I’d never date anyone again that already has a kid, but for some reason she makes me want to.   I have to look at the reality of the situation right now.   I’m 25, and I’m really ready to settle down and start my family but I’m picky to the point where its detrimental to my love life.   This girl…is cute, and funny, and unique like I am.   She’s intelligent and has those lisa lobe glasses that drive me crazy…lol   I thought about it today that If she ever asked me what my first impression of her was, that I’d say she looked like a real life version of Velma from scooby doo, because she was a hip hip lady…lol   Velma to me always seemed to get the shaft.   I mean she did all the actual detective work, but fred and that skank daphne got all the credit.   Scooby and shaggie just got high (scoobie snacks anyone?) and went looking for munchies all the time…and I’m pretty sure that scrappy was the illegitimate love child of scooby and some random bitch.    I mean think about, they throw scrappy off a train in a box?   Who the fuck does that?…lol   So I vote Velma…….at least they made her hot in the movie….lol

I’m just kind of rambling right now because I’m too tired to focus on my book anymore and I’m waiting to see if Kat will e-mail me.   And I very much like her name……Kat……short for Katarina……..very cool.

Peace.

While I’ve never really been a fan of MS Media Center, I have to say that it is pretty slick and fluid in Win 7.   Not enough to replace Media Portal in the HTPC but still, maybe enough for me to install new setups with for customers.   I’ll add more later.

Anyways, me and my good buddy Matt came up with an awesome Idea a couple years back when we were both working at the east store.   Matt does custom airbrushing, ya know the realistic flame, hot rod flame, skulls, etc.   I thought it would be a cool idea if I could get him to do a realistic flame case for me, because for one it’d look sweet as all hell, and 2, because I might be able to sell them.    So, exhibit A is the pic of the case before Paint.

and exhibit b, after paint….

Pretty wicked huh?

And thats BEFORE wet sand and buff, thats this weekend.

Only a few problems considering this was our first attempt at doing a case.   First off, I taped the case up.   I taped OVER the drive bay covers so they wouldn’t get covered with paint, problem is that by doing that the paint didn’t lay exactly the way I wanted it to on the edges of the drives.   This isn’t really a big problem as I can just lightly sand the clear a little smoother around them, but next time I’ll just remove the covers entirely and tape behind the panel.    The power led, as well as the hd led and reset button were a PAIN IN THE ASS to tape up, so next time I think i’ll remove those too, I didn’t wanna take the time on the trial run considering they were hot glued in.   Its hard to tell, but the front vents on the bottom of the panel, the dial to open and close them was painted, but since its cheap plastic the paint rubbed off the first time I opened the vents, no biggie, just get all the paint off and touch it up with some 99 black.   One thing I didn’t think about is how much dust would accumulate inside the front panel when it was sprayed, it came right off but jesus christ it was dusty.   And the biggest problem I have is that the temperature last weekend when matt sprayed it wasn’t exactly warm outside, therefore some of the pearl ran a little.   Now I’m gonna try to wet sand it out, however I’m very weary about going through the clear and into the base, but say la ve……If I do go through, I Might just have to wet sand the whole thing a little more, and re-clear the panel with nasons aresol clear and start the process over again.   But for the amount of stuff that went wrong, I’m very happy with the results.

Cheiftec Full Size tower case

AMD 7750X2 Black Edition (I decided to stay dual core because honestly, triple cores are useless and I don’t multitask or game enough to warrent a quad core of the same clock speed).

4gb ddr2 1066 OCZ 5-5-5-15

320gb Sata HD

Dual Layer SATA DVD Burner

Biostar TF8200 A2+ Motherboard (heat pipes on north and south bridge chips, as well as some pretty decent reviews, decent onboard video and optical audio with onboard HDMI, future board for the HTPC should I later upgrade to AM3)

Cooler Master v8 CPU Cooler (good lord this thing is fucking massive…lol)

OCZ Fatal1ty Modular 550watt SLI Rated Power Supply

XFX 9800GT 512mb ddr3 Video Card (I could of gone with a Gtx240 or so, but for a hundred bucks more it just didn’t seem worth it to me.)

Vista 32bit (Student copy, plus I don’t see myself using more than 4gb’s of ram for anything in the immediate future.)

Asus Wireless Card

Rosewill Media Card Reader

Logitech 5.1 speakers (Same speakers I’ve had for the last 5 and half years…………just cant killem…still work great.)

All in all I spent around 600 on the system itself, and then another 150 on just odd and end stuff I needed for around here.   Personally I think I came out on the right side of it.   I didn’t need anything extreme, and going AM3 was just too iffy, there’s only 3 or 4 boards on newegg that even fully support it and ddr3, and I refuse to buy intel.    Upgrade options later on are a faster quad core (when software is actually WRITTEN for quads), and more ram should the need arise which wont be anytime soon.   Build time took around an hour as I had to figure out how the v8 mounted onto the board, and it was a bit akward mounting the board with that hunk of stuff on there.   Overall though I’m very happy.   vista installed in about 10 minutes.   Didn’t have to install any drivers really, downloaded latest vid drivers, and installed the board drivers and I was pretty much good to go.    And might I say, I installed the demo version of DeskScapes from Stardock………that is some cool software, not sure if I wanna drop the 20 bucks on it, but its still really cool.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that it has the coolest red ambient glow from the PS and the Cooler……….looks devlish in a way….lol

First and foremost…my business is supposed to be one of the few that is techincally recession proof.   Our business model is set up so that we’re 50 percent retail, 50 percent installer.   Therefore, if we lose business in installer, we usually see a rise in retail (customers fixing their stuff on their own instead of an installer).   To my boss’ though, the fact that were losing anything in installer is a bad sign.   That bad sign leads directly back to me.   I feel as if there is a huge amount of pressure to prove myself to these people…and I’m trying………but it doesn’t seem to be working.    Me and my outside sales rep went out south to the bulk of my customers the other day to see if anything was happening that we should know about, as well as to introduce me face to face for the first time, to personalize me more with my shops.   Some shops went incredibly well, we’ve got a great lead on some hydraulic business with KDOT Osage, as well as a bulk filter order.   Thats great, hydraulic fittings are a shit ton of money, as well as the other pieces of that such as hose, equipment, fluid, etc.   Other shops were so so, I don’t really know what to say to an account that is a body shop that I could technically try to get, but I myself am not allowed to sell product too.   My east store is responsible for all of my dupont business…problem is that when i left the east store, no one over there knows a fucking thing now…lol   Thats the reason I was in charge of paint and body, and thats the reason I was selling 45 to 50 thousand  dollars a month, approx. 50 percent of the sales.

I’m supposed to branch out and find new business and stuff like that but yet my one coworker who has been there for 10 years, has control over about 30 percent of the business they want me to get.   Why is that?…Simple.   She’s got boobs, she’ll use them, and she gets away with it.   Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good person.   But I don’t like the idea of my talent being second fiddle to some womans sexuality and ability to flirt.   I know that she is a good salesman because she uses her assets to her advantage, but it still sucks because when it comes to running a store, following the policies, and general mechanical knowledge, she can’t hold a candle to me.   So…the question I have is…what do I do?   Do I go after the business she has to try to gain some of their confidence in me?   Or do I try to focus on the business I have and try to personalize myself more with them?   Or do I break down and go back east and take over paint again?

The sad thing is…I feel as if I put a lot of work into the east store and the paint, and to sit there and watch what its become…..I hate it.   I wanna go over there and get back all the business I’ve worked so hard to get.   But I dont wanna bail on the south store.   I feel as if the east store was a better fit for me and my skills, but I definitely have more oppurtunities at the south store.   I can make a lot more money out south than I can back east…..So once again I’m at a cross roads.

I don’t really know what else to do except try to gain some more business from answering more phones up front and just trying to personalize myself more with my south customers.  It’s just really daunting and sometimes I wonder if I’m really made out for it…

Bugs and Incompatability galore.   The other big thing that literally has me telling people to stay away from Vista entirely is the hardware requirements.   When I installed Vista Business 32-bit on my tower I was running a modest system.   An old 939 board, athlon x2 4200, 2gb of ddr ram, and a cheap geforce 6600 pci-x card.   The system was stable, but man did it LAG.   I thought about that and looked at the minimum requirements and was like WTF?   I know how to optomize a windows system, but I was sufficiently above the requirements, did a clean install, but was sitting there like why is this so clunky?

So………when I heard that MS was going to release Windows 7 Fairly quickly after the Vista Fiasco, I wasn’t all that surprised.   Here is what I’m Surprised with though…..its good………its not great…….but its good.

So the new Desktop isn’t a HUGE step like going from XP to Vista was, but its a good step in the right direction.   The main changes are obviously that the taskbar has added some additions such as quick previews and the like.

The new Preview option borrows slightly from Mac OSX and other docks that are commonly found, such as my personal favorite Object Dock.

Something else that’s fairly cool is the new “hot lists”.   For example, they’ve added in the start menu now a quick access list to the most recent files you’ve created, used, etc. for each recently accessed program.   So if you like me used paint to prtscrn some screenshots really quick, it will present you with a quick access on the start menu for the paint program.    The same with Word, Outlook, etc.   This might not seem like much, but its a welcome addition.

Something else that’s new, is a little context menu in of all programs, PAINT.    Not everyone understands the differences between image file formats.   MS smartly recognizes this and added a context menu to the save as command, offering the most common image types and there most common uses.   For example, for the jpg format, the menu says that its meant for e-mail, web use, and uploading to photo sites.   Gif says its mainly a web format, BMP for higher quality, etc.   This is just a cool menu I found that shows that MS isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel here, there going down to small details, which is something they didn’t do enough of in VISTA.

This post is a work in progress, as I test more and get more screen shots I’ll post them along with the rest of my impressions.

UPDATE: January 28, 2009

So I’ve been using the Win 7 beta for a while now, learning its advantages and shortcomings and I’ve come to a few more conclusions.   First off, it runs MUCH better on a low end system than Vista does.   For example, my test system is a ~4 year old Dell, P4 3.0ghz, 1gb of ddr3200.   I’m running it off an 80 gig 7200 rpm ide drive that’s about 3 years old.   Vista runs slow as a dog on this system when I tested it a while ago.   Win 7 however runs amazingly well.   In fact, the aero interface in Vista was darn near unusable in this setup, however the Win 7 beta runs the interface quite well.   Oh, and btw, this setup is running on an ANCIENT Nvidia geforce FX5200 AGP.

Sure, the tower may be fairly low powered compared to what I’m used to using.   But, I’m very much a techie who finds a use for  my old stuff.   For example, my very nice Nmedia HTPC case thats hooked up to my very nice Sanyo LCD 46″, is housing an old AMD board, a Sempron 2400 SOCKET A, 512mb of ddr2700, and a 40gb IDE for windows, and a 320gb SATA drive for media.   Can anyone use that system for their needs anymore?   Probably not, but just for running Media Portal it works extremely well at viewing my dvd rip collection on my lcd through a Geforce 6200 AGP with a dvi to HDMI adapter cable.   So what do I have in that system money wise?……maybe 100 bucks now days besides the case?

Just goes to show you that old hardware still has many uses to someone who can find a use.   I kept that in mind as I used Win 7 over the last couple weeks.   I can honestly say that one of its BIGGEST pro’s is that its much more lenient on  the hardware side.   Especially in a recession, its harder than many people think to get someone to upgrade there software, let alone put out another 500 or more for a new tower or laptop.

Another Pro is the adjustment of the UAC that i HATED in Vista, into something thats just bearable.   To me it works like an intelligent software firewall.   For example, it asks if you want to change the time and date when attempting to.   Now in Vista, it would ask……every…..time……Granted how often does someone change the time on there system but still, its the point.   You could remedy this by turning the UAC off…..completely off.   There was no middle ground.   At least in 7 they’ve set up the permissions so that the UAC only asks once for common tasks.

Now I do have some cons.

While I consider myself a power user, why did it take me more than 5 minutes to find the device manager?   I applauded MS for trying to make the control panel more user friendly in Vista, but you can’t go from one way of doing things for almost 10 years, change it for one release, and then completely change it again.    Menu driven interfaces are great for everyday users, however I still do believe that there should be an option to return the control panel back to an xp-era style.   To me at least it would make for an easier transission.   And i STILL couldn’t get my very common rt2500 chipset wireless card to work.   Swapped out for a marvell chipset and BAM, works like a charm.   Odd, as my rt2500 after a little finageling with the drivers worked fine in VISTA.

Now this really isn’t a con, as much as it is a suggestion; A request if you will.

As a power user, I’m used to using the administrative tools options to stop and start services on startup.   However, more times than not, I find myself using the same tried and true method of hitting up run, and msconfig.   I use this menu after building systems to stop certain software from starting, such as MSN Messenger, Lexmark one touch printer utilities, Java Update Scheduler, etc.   Anything that generally takes up system memory and doesn’t really do ….anything until you interact with it.    It really is amazing how many bs programs are running in the background on every system I work on.   It would be nice if there was some sort of a program or menu that an everyday user can use to do the same thing a more advanced user has done for god knows how long in msconfig.   A simple menu with the program name, and what it does would be fine.   Hell if you want you can even throw in a level of requirements, say 3 levels, needed at startup, not needed, or unsure.   Not saying that any system services should be included, but do I really need Google Earth to update everytime I start my damn system.

Okay, that is all for now.

January 2008:   January wasn’t that bad.   I started out the year in bed with a really incredible girlfriend in Shelby.   We had just gotten back from Raymond’s new years shindig.   I couldn’t help but feel really optimistic at that point.

February - May 2008:   Okay…..this was kind of a train wreck.   Shelby had moved out of her dad and stepmoms, lived with her roomate……fought with her roomate…….and fought………..and fought………and fought….lol….eventually we realized it just wasn’t working out so she moved in with me, made j’s old room kaylee’s room.   Now….to be completely honest, Shelby was still having a little trouble adjusting to the whole being on her own thing.   I figured that living with someone like me who’s self sufficient would be a good thing, and it was to an extent.   I absolutely fell in love with kaylee while she was here…and I’m not gonna lie and say that I didn’t think about what it would be like if she were to be my daughter someday.   Long story short…Shelby freaked out because I was more committed to making future plans than she was…..and we broke up.   Me not being a complete asshole and her not having anywhere else to go, I told her she could stay with me until she could get on her feet.   That worked for ……………….maybe a month, and then it just went to shit.

June 2008:   This is when I had probably the most shocking thing in my life happen to me.   I was working at the east store…nothing really new that day.   I get a call from my sister……fro died.   My grandmother was and still is my best friend in a way.   She was always there to help me……….and to listen to me when I all I needed to do was vent and talk.   I just remember getting home and calling Shelby to take me to the hospital………….and I remember breaking down and just………bawling my eyes out………..and i got it together……..and that was it…….through the viewing…..funeral…………….I didn’t cry again………….some people may say that thats a bad thing…..that I didn’t get it out………….to all those people I say that people deal with greif in their own way………let me deal with it in mine.

July 2008:   One big ass argument with Shelby and I found myself with her and kaylee  moving out and back to arkansas at the end of the month.   Well……..I’m not the type to bash people so I’ll just say that it was for the best.   However…………I still really miss Kaylee.

August 2008:   I Finally took the plunge and went part time at the store and went out on my own with my own business.

September 2008:   I realized that I went out on my own at the WRONG time with the economy and the meltdown.

October - December 2008:   Went to working at the east store and south store 6 days a week to make ends meet, eventually getting lucky and taking a job at the south store with an awesome schedule and better pay than I had before I left.

So………all in all……….I’m in a better job than I was last year……..I learned some valuable life lessons with my business…….especially how much money I’d Have to invest directly to make it work.   And I learned just how much I want a family of my own……..Not nessecarily today….but sometime soon.   I just wish I knew what the new year was gonna bring.   It’s hard to believe that after all the stuff that happened to me this year that I’d be optimistic………..but I am.   I mean yeah, I don’t have a girlfriend, and I don’t know what my next step is in my career if I’m gonna stay with Oreilly or go out on my own again……….but it doesn’t matter to me right now…….because its a new year………and I’m gonna try to make the best of it.

Resolution?

To explore more of what makes me…………me.

I wrote a lot back then, trying to get my thoughts out. Poetry, Song lyrics, the whole gauntlet. I kinda stopped after a while, not really sure why. Probably because I just got too busy. It was right about then that I was going from job to job just trying to get some cash together. I’m kinda bummed now that I stopped. So I figured I’d try again…so here we go.

For almost a decade you’ve been my friend,
a crack in the wall of the dark crevice of self,
letting the sunlight pierce through as if a sword through stone,
shimmering in its opposite light

For almost a decade you’ve been my friend,
the voice on the other end of the line,
soft and gentle in it’s magic,
making my cheeks turn upwards as if standing on my head

For almost a decade you’ve been my friend,
the face I’ve seen in front of me,
losing myself in your eyes of warmth,
feeling heaven’s grace on your lips

For almost a decade you’ve been my friend,
holding your small hand in my own,
knowing that deep down, without a shadow of doubt,
these are the hands of someone who will do something great

For almost a decade you’ve been my friend,
For almost a decade…Friend.